Planned gentrification as a means of urban regeneration

Neighborhood change in the guise of gentrification has been widely criticized as having negative impacts of various kinds. This paper describes a different kind of gentrification, planned gentrification, and compares its implications with those of spontaneous gentrification. The study examined the similarities and differences existing between this planned gentrification process and the spontaneous gentrification process described in the literature by analyzing the changes resulting from the building of six new housing developments in lower-class neighborhoods in the city of Ramat-Gan, Israel. The analysis is based on an ethnographic description of 240 interviews of women living in the new housing developments and adjacent old buildings. The results show that an advantage of the planned gentrification process is that it does not undesirably affect the original population and does not lead to their displacement. The planned gentrification process can have positive socio-physical and behavioral effects on the old neighborhood.